


Led Astray

by NorroenDyrd



Series: Should Never Have Existed [16]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bonding, Crack Relationships, Emotional, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Canon Inquisitor (Dragon Age), POV Cassandra Pentaghast, Poetic, Romance, Tevinter Inquisitor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 23:18:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14091894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: She starts out with her blade again his throat - and ends up infatuated, enchanted, elated. All caution to the wind. Led astray by a Tevinter madman.A glance at a Cassandra romance in an AU where the Inquisitor is actually Magister Alexius, who got the Anchor after a failed mission to go back in time and remove the Herald.





	Led Astray

**Author's Note:**

> Now with an illustration!

 

 

She starts out with her blade against his throat, her face a distorted mask, bobbing in the inky pool of the dungeon, ruddy with both torchlight and barely contained rage. Her steel carves a hair-thin line in his flesh - but Maker knows, she is ready to plunge it deeper. Because the man before her is a vile heretic, a member of a Tevinter cult - who, by his own resigned, sigh-like admission, helped the murderers of the Most Holy, and would have kept helping them had his twisted maleficar magic not backfired at him.  
  
  
She starts out with her blade against his throat, while their gazes lock in, with barely a blink, two pairs of brown eyes boring into one another, their irises blending into a glaring orange and an aggressive red as they reflect the torches’ flame… And then, there comes a flare of acid green, ripping a contrasting gash through the rusty, reddish hues of their surroundings. A reminder that, much as she loathes this devious blood mage, he - according to the Inquisition’s impromptu Fade expert, at least - holds the power to seal the demonic Rifts that plague the land in increasing numbers, raining ever-ravenous monsters that know no weariness, no reason, no compassion. A reminder that, if the Inquisition is to push these creatures back where they came from, they need the cultist alive.  
  
  
She starts out with her blade against his throat - but not long after, she listens to her comrades’ council and leads him through the burning valley, and beyond, watching in amazement as he, indeed, pours out the green light that devours his hand to wipe off the oozing wounds in the Veil between worlds. And with every Rift sealed, with every demon vanquished, it begins to dawn on her that the two of them - the righteous Seeker and the godless stranger from Tevinter - are actually… oddly in sync when it comes to fighting. His flashy, staggering spells complement the strikes of her blade the way one part of a melody complements another (she has never been particularly musical, but she thinks she found that comparison in a… book somewhere). Despite his rather advanced years - she would place him as some fifteen years older than herself, at the very least - his reflexes are still lightning-fast, and it almost takes her breath away to see him rain fire upon the creatures she has engaged in combat, or, in a broad flourish of his hand, shield her with a glimmering, ghostly turquoise barrier just as she starts running out of breath and takes a step back under the onslaught of grasping demons.  
  
  
She starts out with her blade against his throat - but then, the long, strenuous hours of fighting demons and protecting the people of Thedas turn into days, and days into weeks, and the cultist begins to combine the role of a captive, still kept in the dungeon and pulled out when his Rift-closing Mark is needed, with that of a… a guardian. A travelling hero, who traverses the grassy highlands and the rain-lashed grey coastlines and the perpetually murky, stagnant marshlands where the air is dense like tar, in search of monsters to slay and people to save, accompanied by… well, quite a collection of ragtag misfits. An annoying dwarven scribbler, a mysterious elven apostate, a Qunari spy posing (not really) as a mercenary, a lone Grey Warden; herself, too - a Seeker trying to keep those bickering grown-up children in line; and so many others. Perhaps, in the great scheme of things, a cultist from the cursed Imperium is not as odd an addition to their world-saving team after all….  
  
  
She starts out with her blade against his throat - but the more she travels with him, the more puzzle pieces she discovers, to fall into place and complete the portrait of what initially seemed like a flat black shadow of a cackling villain. Yes, he never denied falling in with the malevolent force behind the Conclave explosion; he never denied being a maleficar. But apart from a maleficar, he is also a leader. Once a member of his homeland’s Magisterium, prodding his fellows desperately so that they might start paying attention to the Imperium’s crumbling buildings and struggling citizens, he has now taken a great interest in securing the demon-sieged settlements, and charting safe routes across the wilderness, and providing for the refugees; and it is somewhat… endearing to watch him wring his venuous, long-fingered hands in exasperation when the scouts report that yet another bridge has collapsed somewhere.  
  
  
Apart from a maleficar, he is also a scholar. She may not understand the terms he uses when he goes over some magical technicalities with Researcher Minaeve, but she does not need a grasp over some arcane lore to notice how his features light up when he absorbs new knowledge, some of the lines fading from his harrowed face - and… And she rather enjoys the challenge of wit that one time he invites her to solve an astrarium puzzle with him; it even makes her blood race a little (yes, the intellectual stimulation did that, not the fact that he placed his hand on her back!).  
  
  
Apart from a maleficar, he is also a parent. A proud father of an only son that, from what she understands, has been locked in the trap of endless agony that is life with the Blight in his blood, forcing the cultist to become what he is. Ready to swear an oath of loyalty to any and every bringer of evil, so long as they dangled the promise of a cure over his head, like a bone over the maw of a starving dog (his comparison, not hers; while she still believed his villainy inexcusable, she would never demean him like that). Now, though, instead of an illusory bone, the Inquisition has given him real, tangible hope. Leliana knows the Hero of Ferelden, who has gathered quite a bit of extensive research on the Blight - and she has been corresponding most eagerly on the subject, excited to hear all about the man that has managed to keep the deadly cursed infection subdued for years instead of just a few days, and to help him in any way she can. So a promise has been made, in return for the cultist’s hard work as demon slayer, to locate his son and grant him protection and healing. And as the scouts linger with the news, and as the lone father grows restless, irascible, even violent at times, demanding to know how the search progresses and turning ashen grey at each elusive reply, with his eyes sinking into dark circles and his fingers bleeding unstable lightning magic - she is there to snap at him and kick him into behaving properly; and then, after he comes to apologize for lashing out, his expression sombre and his head bowed down, she is also there to share a tale of her own losses, of her own cries of grief and anger when her brother, her everything, was taken from her. She starts out with her blade against his throat - and yet now, finds herself breathing easier after spilling her soul out to him.  
  
  
She starts out with her blade against his throat - but she seems to forget that when she turns to him for comfort, and he to her. She… She purposely forgets that, after their mission to Therinfal Redoubt, which unexpectedly culminates in a confrontation with a deformed mass of long naked limbs that wore the guise of Lord Seeker Lucius. At that moment when the cultist… the Herald of Andraste recovers from his bloodcurdling experience of attempted demonic possession with a long, dry sob, and almost looses his footing, only kept from falling by her own embrace. As he explains, grasping at her arms like a drowning man, Lord Seeker’s demon showed him visions of what the world would have looked like if it had usurped his body and pledged itself to his old cult again. If it had used his Mark for evil. Thedas would have turned into a smouldering wasteland, the claws of corrupted crystal bleeding it dry, while a whole army of demons rushed over its cracked, crumbling soil, sweeping off any last, quivering human and elven beings that stood in its way.  
  
  
‘That is the real me, isn’t it?’ he whispers shakily, looking up at her with eyes that look like dim pink circles among purplish folds of bruised skin. 'The man who destroyed the world… I still have it in me, deep down - that seed of darkness that swelled when my wife died, when my boy fell ill… It could have grown when the Inquisition captured me, and I had a chance to live you to be killed by demons and run back to my master… And it can still grow now…’  
  
  
To which she replies, the image of steel cutting flesh in a torchlit dungeon expunged from her mind,  
  
  
'I do not believe that. And I refuse to listen to this nonsense! To think - you are a grown man, an experienced mage… And yet you fell for what a demon told you?! Ugh! You are better than this!’  
  
  
She starts out with her blade against his throat - and yet, she keeps worrying for him. When he is upset; when he falters in battle - and when, on that terrible blazing night, after his former coconspirators unleash their full force on Haven, he steps out into the snowy darkness, to face the wrath of the cult’s would-be deity, the Elder One… And does not return. She can barely suffer through the evacuation, glancing back every second till her neck grows stiff and the rim of her cuirass rubs a deep sore into her skin with the constant motion. His son and apprentice walk by her side, leaning against one another wearily and dragging their feet through the snow, for they are still shaken and drained after racing ahead of the Tevinter horde to warn the Inquisition - especially the younger of the two men, the poor soul with the Blight, who pushed himself to his limits not to faint, not to choke on the flood of his own blackened vomit, while he helped his tearful, slightly shaking father calculate the angle of the trebuchets needed to hit the mountain and bury the approach to Haven in snow. Their reunion was so heart-wrenchingly brief that she feels something shatter inside of her whenever she meets the young Tevinter’s gaze. And at some point, in the middle of trudging up a semi-non-existent mountain path, knee-deep in hard-crusted snowdrifts, she turns around and stumbles back, peering into darkness through the curtain of snow that claws her face raw. Looking for a sign - any sign - that he lived; that he followed; that he will get to hold his son again; to… to fight by her side again. And she does find him, curled up on the ground by the side of a broken cart from the Inquisition’s caravan, his lips greyish-blue and his eyelashes white and fuzzy with hoarfrost. She finds him, and tosses herself on her knees next to him, and cradles him close, shielding him from the icy wind until Cullen and his scouts track them both down - and whispers feverishly to him, calling him by his first name for the first time since they met,  
  
  
'Gereon… Gereon, stay with me… Please… Your son needs you; the Inquisition needs you… I… I need you…’  
  
  
She starts out with her blade against his throat - but going onward from that moment in the snow, and all the way through their quest for the mystical castle Solas’ 'Fade experience’ told him about, and through the setting-up of that very same castle, she keeps… noticing things about him. Like the crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes, or that coy little smirk that sometimes plays upon his lips, or the way the timbre of his voice shifts subtly when he talks to people who are dear to him: his son, his apprentice, and… could that be… her? She keeps… doing things in his presence, too. Like laughing far too readily at his dry humour, or walking far too swiftly when they have a meeting arranged, or yelling far too lividly at his apprentice, the sometimes insufferably smug Dorian, whenever he begins to tease either of them about 'doe-eyed looks’ and other similar nonsense. And also… Maker, how girlishly stupid of her… leaving her gauntlets off so that it might occur to him to kiss her hand in greeting.  
  
  
She starts out with her blade against his throat and her face flushed in rage - but during their days at Skyhold, the new tides of smothering magenta, which rush up her throat all the way to her hairline, are unleashed by hearing him pay her a compliment, or discovering a flower pressed between the pages of Swords and Shields (right after she heard him arguing with someone in the garden over that same plant’s proper genus name in Tevene), or seeing him, drunk on dubious Qunari beverage after killing a dragon for the first time, strip down to his waist to show Bull that he, too, has scars worth boasting about. In particular… Oh, in particular, the three gnarled lines left from the claws of a demon that he shielded her from.  
  
  
She starts out with her blade against his throat - and ends up whisked off her feet in a whirlwind of lavish courtship that, as the others are only too ready to reveal to her, he has been daydreaming about ever since he discovered her love for rom… specific literature. She ends up taken on one scenic walk after another, her reflection in the rippling mirror of a moonlit pool looking almost alien in a loose shirt rather than a suit of armour. And crowned with a wreath of lush flowers, which swims in a bright reflection within his eyes, huge with quiet awe. And recited - purred - poetry to; snippets from a most scandalous Tevene collection, which he tries reading out in their translation to common, then cringes, declares that it does not do justice to the original, and instead swathes her in a soft, drowsy flow of rhythmic words in a language she cannot understand but still savours, each syllable like a sip of wine.  
  
  
She starts out with her blade against his throat - and ends up with her hand on his shoulder, her forehead against his, her smile mirrored on his upturned, blissful face, moments away from a tender, leisurely touch of the lips, which will then speed up into a hungry, passionate race of tongues, of hands, of bodies, him trembling when she draws him in, because he has been so cold, so crushed, so alone in his widower’s bed; too absorbed by caring for his son - who is better now, oh so much better, thanks to the Hero and Varric’s friend Merrill - to even dream of finding love again.  
  
  
She starts out with her blade again his throat - and ends up infatuated, enchanted, elated. All caution to the wind. Led astray by a Tevinter madman.


End file.
